Chapter 18

Zaidna

The Empire of Judath

The Temple of Marin

Ravad thrust open the silver-lined doors of the Chamber of Dreaming. “Apologies, ladies.” He nodded calmly to the priestesses, who stumbled from their posts as he entered.

The Nassé’s chronicler, a tall, thin dalanai woman who sat at the room’s sole writing desk, closed a thick leather tome and stood up, not bothering to hide the annoyance washing over her face. “You know the sanctity of this place!” she reprimanded. “Even an emperor cannot enter here without the Nassé’s permission. Such disrespect is—”

“Unforgivable?” Ravad interrupted, throwing his hands up dismissively. “Incorrigible? Rude? Juvenile? I’ve heard it all before, so let’s keep this brief to stop me from getting bored.” He looked back at the other priestesses, who were cowering behind him, and pointed to the exit. “All of you please get out.”

The priestesses and chronicler glanced at each other nervously, uncertain of how to proceed.

Finally, a thin white hand parted the black curtains surrounding the bed at the center of the chamber, and the Nassé spoke, her voice both sweet and terse. “It is fine. Do as the emperor commands.”

The chronicler bowed low to the Nassé and left the chamber, the other priestesses following meekly behind.

As the silver doors shut with a soft boom, Ravad walked nonchalantly to the bed and seated himself across from it on a nearby settee. Through the gauze of the curtains he could see the Nassé’s gray silhouette reclining on a generous pile of pillows. “Well, Xinthi, you’re looking rather perky for someone who has been too sick to meet with me.” There was a strange smell coming from the bed—something bitter and medicinal. Almost like ketas root.

Xinthi’s ruby-like eyes shone with carefully controlled cunning and fury. “Emperor of the Sun,” she greeted venomously. “To what do I owe this pleasure? Our quarterly review is yet weeks away.”

Ravad placed his elbows upon his knees, maintaining a steady smile as he laced his fingers together beneath his nose. “Have you forgotten about my frequent requests for an audience this last week?”

“As you mentioned, I have been ill.” Xinthi lifted a small ceramic cup to her lips and took a sip.

“I understand that you engstaxis sometimes need a little extra pampering to maintain your delicate constitutions, but I would think that you could spare a moment for the emperor of Judath, especially at an urgent time like now.”

Xinthi lifted her fine chin a little too high for Ravad’s liking. “I’ve been indisposed.”

Ravad cocked his head to one side. “Does the surprise attack on Chalei not concern you?”

“Of course I care about the star empire,” Xinthi replied calmly. “I care about all of Naltena’s followers. My apologies for not replying to your—numerous—requests for an audience. Grievous matters of spirituality have weighed heavily on my mind.”

Ravad felt his fingers tighten about his jaw. “Well, I’d say this attack merits discussion. Whoever infiltrated Lanae Palace is a threat to us all—not just to Chalei. Our people rely on the visions of you Nassés to preserve us from danger. And yet we have heard nothing from you for two seasons. What visions are you holding back from us?”

“I have had many visions,” Xinthi murmured cryptically. She downed the rest of her tea.

“And their interpretations?”

Xinthi stared at Ravad, seeming to mull over his question. After a moment, she turned to pour herself another cup of tea.

“Again, with the silence. Your predecessor gave two or three useful interpretations per season to my father, and you have given me at least one per season for the time in which we’ve held our positions. As I recall, the last time you gave us a warning from Naltena—”

Xinthi cleared her throat softly, causing Ravad to frown. Two seasons ago, she had proclaimed that a plague would strike Judath’s livestock and spread swiftly to the other empires by way of sea trade routes. Quickly heeding the warning, the empires mobilized and carefully inspected and segregated their livestock, which in the end localized the epidemic to a handful of quarantined narus, saving all three empires from a catastrophic famine and an irreparable halt to intercontinental trade. But while everyone was celebrating and praising Naltena’s mercy, Ravad’s wife, Arja, passed away quietly and without warning during childbirth.

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“I do not choose which dreams Naltena sends to me,” Xinthi murmured finally. “I only can interpret that which I receive. How am I to know about the impending death of an emperor—or an empress—if Naltena does not see fit to send me warning, or if it is her direct will that such a thing occurs?”

“So, it is Naltena’s will that the empires are to remain in danger without her guidance? You have received no visions about this at all?” Ravad clenched his fingers and rested his chin upon his fist.

“Of course I have had visions,” Xinthi snapped, her eyes flashing. “However, some of the visions Naltena chooses to send are complicated in nature—far more complicated than you could comprehend. Such dreams elude even proper elucidation; their meanings can be found only after the events shown in them have already taken place.”

“Are you saying that’s what happened here? You failed to interpret a vision that could have prevented this attack?”

“I did not fail,” Xinthi countered. “I was not meant to know. The meaning of these visions only became clear after the threat manifested itself. The star emperor’s death was unavoidable.”

“His death?” Ravad exclaimed. “His death, I see. Then you aren’t aware that Emperor Tashau lives?”

Xinthi flinched with surprise, sloshing a little tea onto the white hems of her robes.

“He lives—of course he lives. The symbols clarify themselves at last!” She dabbed a little frantically at her robes with a handkerchief.

“Clarity!” Ravad’s face grew hot. “We lose two empresses in one year and you casually talk of clarity? Have the years made your mind soft?”

Xinthi sneered, displaying sharply-pointed teeth. “And you wonder why I will not grant you an audience. As I have told you countless times before, I never had any visions concerning your wife or her death, then or now. I cannot help it if Naltena found Arja unworthy of mention, so take your grudge to the goddess yourself!”

Ravad could contain his anger no more. “If that’s the case, let’s see what Naltena does find worthy of mention!” He stood up abruptly and moved over to the chronicler’s desk, picking up the leather book that contained the present year’s recorded visions.

There was a loud clattering sound as Xinthi dropped her cup onto a platter. “What are you doing?” she demanded. “You have no right to look through dreams that have yet to be interpreted! Put that down!” She flung her hand out of the shadows, her skin pale and corpse-like.

Ravad shot her with a glare and unlatched the thick gold clasp on the tome’s cover with one hand. He opened the book and flipped to a random page. It was empty. Realizing that the year was still young, and that spring had only just passed, he turned back toward the beginning. “What is this?” he mumbled as he found empty page after empty page. “There is nothing here.”

Xinthi did not reply.

Ravad closed the book and inspected the binding, looking for a glyph or any other indication of a security measure that would keep the entries hidden. Finding none, he dropped the book to the floor and circled the bed to face the Nassé. “What is this?” he repeated. Again met with no reply, he moved to the curved bookshelves at the back of the chamber, scanning the intricately embossed titles until he found the previous year’s chronicle. He pulled it from the shelf and thumbed through it quickly, finding the pages filled with recorded dreams and annotations. Each entry was meticulously labeled, and each began with the sharp, jagged scrawl of the chronicler’s recordings, followed by the neat, precise print of the Nassé as she painstakingly interpreted each symbol. Most of the dreams were repeated in the chronicle several times, with more of the symbols interpreted each time until the full meanings of the dreams were understood.

It was fine, careful work. Throughout the spring and summer, the Nassé had had dreams relating to the harvests in Judath and Chalei, and the dream relating to the disease among the narus had been recorded and interpreted for several weeks before she had sent the full warning to Ravad. Then, suddenly, after the twenty-first day of fall, the pages were blank. The twenty-first day of fall—forty-six days before his wife’s death.

“Where—” Ravad flipped through the pages again and again, expecting that he had missed something—that these blank pages had been saved for some unknown purpose, or that visions from fall and winter were recorded elsewhere in the chronicle, but he found nothing. Ravad slapped the book shut. Why had the visions ceased to be recorded only weeks before Arja’s death?

Ravad returned to the bed, dropping the chronicle upon the mattress in front of Xinthi. Her expression flashed a hint of guilt, before it became cold and hard.

“What has my family done to displease you that you would not record something for Arja?” Ravad demanded.

“Nothing!” Xinthi retorted. “I told you I had no visions concerning her!”

“If you are having visions, why aren’t they being recorded?”

“The symbols are difficult to—”

“Enough!” Ravad snarled. “The evidence is right here! You’re withholding visions or you are not having them at all!”

“That is not true!”

“I’m not stupid. The stench of ketas root is thick in this room. You deprive yourself of sleep on purpose. Why?”

Xinthi’s pupils shrank to thin slits, and she seemed shaken.

“It’s the sleeping sickness, isn’t it?” Ravad accused.

“The sleeping sickness?” Xinthi looked up at him with surprise, her pupils dilating to a hideous degree, and she burst out laughing.

Ravad stared down at her, fully confused.

“The sleeping sickness is a myth!” Xinthi exclaimed, struggling to contain her spasms of laughter as she knuckled her eyes dry. “The sleeping sickness. All right, Ravad. Whatever you wish to believe.”

Ravad shook his head in disgust. He would need to gather the truth elsewhere. He turned from Xinthi and stormed out of the Chamber of Dreaming.